work in progress

Not LOVING this guy yet, but I think I know what I need to do to make me love him.  Unfortunately it involves a colour of wool I don't have, but I was going to have to break my no-buying vow to make my cactus anyway.

In other news...

Boo hiss :(

plans are afoot!

Hot off the press, I just sketched up my next needle felting project.  Peacock!  Having been stuck in the office all weekend (subtitling mainly wrestling and old football matches - urgh!) I can hardly wait to get jabbing with this tomorrow.  After this, I'm going to attempt something three-dimensional and make myself a couple of felted cacti to go in a pair of lovely old egg cups I have.  I even splashed out on a couple of plant flair speech bubbles for them from my colleague, Claire of The Bellwether.  One cactus is going to say, "Hiya," and the other will reply, "Bonjour!"  I haven't yet decided whether to make them look like real cacti or whether to give Hiya a tartan tammy/googly eyes, and  Bonjour a moustache/beret.  Nothing like racial stereotypes to brighten up your pretend succulents, you know.

Needle felting is really getting my creative juices flowing!  Could you tell?!  Just a shame it's not helping me be tidy or useful in any other way...  Well, Dulcie is four now, I'm sure she can practically fend for herself.

I am needle felter, hear me roar!

 

Immediately after writing my uninspired-by-new-year post yesterday, I only went and made my first attempt at needle felting, something that has been on my resolutional to-do list ever since Craftathon 2011.  (See also the damp squib that was Craftathon 2015.) I think this was the first year since 2011 that I didn't claim I was going to try new crafts and...boom!  Maybe the trick is less promising, more doing.

Now, let me tell you, I am already hooked (barbed?!) on needle felting - so satisfying and so much fun!  I'm very pleasantly surprised by the results too.  This lion badge is super cute, I think.  I'm going to give him to Dulcie.  She probably won't appreciate it.  

[Last night I told Dulcie I was just going to make her a CD quickly before we played My Little Pony meets Frozen and Dracula and she said, "All right, as long as you're not making it from wool.  Every time you make something from wool it takes a-a-a-a-a-ages!"  Ha!  Well, it did take me two years to crochet her stripey dress and her Christmas mermaid blanket is currently more of a navel warmer, so she may have a point.]

 I think needle felting holds many possibilities for me, I'm just not quite sure what they are yet.  My finances are in no state to be buying craft materials at the moment, so I'm having to work with the wool I already have, which is a BRIGHT mixture.  Still, limits can be good, I think.  I took the use-what-you-have approach for the majority of the handmade gifts I gave this Christmas and they all worked out pretty well.  I'm hoping to share some photos of them soon, but apparently every photo I took on my phone is incompatible with everything but my phone.  Fingers crossed I can sort that out in the not-too-distant future...

So, yes, I sense a new crafty obsession (or interest, at least) in needle felting, evidenced by my not being able to sleep for thinking about it last night.  Watch this space!  Oh, what a good crafty start to the year :)

meh/fug

 

Happy new year!  All in all, I'm feeling very positive about 2015 (best year of my life so far?) and mildly... ambivalent about the prospect of 2016.  That's a better stance than my usual doom-and-gloom outlook of recent years.   I'm prepared to admit 2016 could go either way, but I can't shake off that early-January fugginess and discontent.  I'm not even feeling the vibe of everybody's positive changes (or intentions) like I usually do, something that always spurs me on.  I went low-key with my own resolutions this year (1 - set the table properly for dinner each night, 2 - really try to start eating fish) and am failing in both so far.  Well, I did MAKE healthy salmon burgers last night, I just couldn't bring myself to eat them, or to eat anything else once my nostrils and mind were filled with fishiness.  (I'm assured by the fish-eaters in my household that they were nice, so here's the recipe, should you want to try them.  They were very easy to make.)  Maybe I should have set my goals for the year a little higher so that a partial failure would be closer to a partial success, if you see what I mean.  Failing at such half-hearted resolutions really amounts to nothing.  Well, I guess it's never too late to set new goals for yourself and I do have all the usual ones in mind - eat well, be active, create, sort out my house...  But mojo?  I have none.  I'm sure it will start to return as I wean myself off the booze and crisps that have been my diet for the last month.  I think a lot of my demotivated state of mind is to do with the fact I spent 11 months of last year losing weight (with considerable difficulty) and just 1 month putting nearly all of it back on (with incredible ease).  Meh!  Meh, I say!  (Only because the words "bah" and "humbug" are no longer seasonally appropriate.)

If you're reading this and have set yourself some challenges for the year ahead, do let me know.  I need someone to inspire me to make more of an effort.  Motivate me, people!

christmas number one?

Yowsers, this Christmas run-up has been the craziest I can remember.  I am not feeling organised at all (so much to do, so little time) and have been helping my friend prepare for her short-notice wedding TOMORROW too.  Busy, busy, busy.

I've warned Dulcie that her handmade gift from me will be delivered in January, if she's lucky, but fortunately her dad has managed to make his traditional Christmas single for her.  And here it is!  This year Dulcie discovers disco and it changes her life.  You can hear me singing too...so apologies!  Ha!  I found the singing much easier this year, possibly because I donned the hat and downed the amaretto from the get-go.  And, yes, I do sound inappropriately sexy at points, if I do say so myself...  Sorry, Dulcie!

If you want to hear Dulcie's Christmas tunes from 2013 and 2014 too, you can find them here.  I must get Graham to upload 2012's tune too, which featured Dulcie's alter ego/wrestling persona, Diablo.

Anyway, I'm off to write out place cards for the wedding, try to find something to wear, shave my legs and make a bird feeder for my granny, even though I've missed the last Christmas post dates already.  Thank goodness Dulcie is at her grandparents' tonight.

sunday morning (it is)

disco dulcie

 

Look, I crocheted a dress for Dulcie!  I actually started this two years ago, abandoned it, then rediscovered it and inadvertently decided to finish it.  Fortunately and inexplicably, I was making it way too big back in 2013 so it fits perfectly now.  I had no pattern or guidance of any sort for this dress, having been inspired to create it by the jumper I crocheted for Magnus, Dulcie's toy mouse.  The funny thing is, the jumper I made for the mouse didn't even fit that well, so why I ever imagined it would be as easy as simple scaling up I do not know.  But...it was.  I basically crocheted a big tube with openings for arms and head then added a couple of sleeves.  And it worked.  I have no idea how that happened.  The crochet gods must have been smiling on me, or perhaps it's just that crochet really is fail safe and fool proof.  

Yesterday was the dress's first public outing and we discovered that the rest of the world seems to love it just as much as Dulcie and I do.  So many people threw compliments Dulcie's way.  Hooray!  She looked so happy and colourful boogieing away in Paperchase.  (And how great is it for me that my four-year-old views Paperchase as a fun place to hang out? Super great!)

 As well as being perfect for disco dancing, the dress is equally good for comfy lounging about at home :)

Dulcie says she never wants to wash this dress because she plans to wear it every day, which is truly a ringing endorsement from a wannabe goth who demands she wears only black, and maybe the odd highlight of red.  More on the goth development soon...